A GUN AND THE MEN BEHIND IT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 187, 22 January 1943, Page 6

A GUN AND THE MEN BEHIND IT

T’S been said pretty often: that New Zealanders have a genius for improvisation. If it hasn’t been true before, then it certainly is true of the men who make the Sten Gun in New Zealand. It’s quite a story. Many branches of the armed forces have need of a light automatic. Tank crews, despatch riders, airmen-anyone with need of a weapon that could be stowed in a confined space-these have normally been equipped with service revolvers-Webley’s clumsy cannon. War in the Pacific woke us to a new value in light automatics. The war went into | the bush, and the slow-firing service

rifle did not perform very well in closequarters fighting, however good it might be as a weapon in open country. One answer was the Thompson submachine gun. But the Tommy has not proved itself the complete answer, It is heavy in itself, and spews out heavy ammunition (.45) at a costly rate of fire. No doubt a gunsmith’s dream of perfection, but the armies of 1942-43 have been wondering if perfection is the answer for a war that’s always in a hurry, Perfection seemed to be too good. Easier And Handier So the Sten is mechanically crude in comparison. It can be made in a hurry, and used in a hurry-slung together and slung away when it’s worn out. Its parts have nothing like the fine tolerance of the machining in more expensive weapons. One five-thousandth of an inch is plenty, and if it gets sand or mud in the works, it shoots them out with its nine millimetre rounds of ammunition. For the munition maker it’s easier, and for the soldier it’s more handyeven if it’s killing impact is not so heavy. It weighs less than seven pounds, much lighter that is, than the Lee Enfield Service Rifle, much lighter than the Tommy Gun. It has about 50 parts, nearly all of them made from pressed metal, and easily adapted to mass production. Carrying the same weight, the soldier has many more nine millimetre rounds than he has of the .45 inch rounds required for the Tommy gun. It doesn’t hit as hard, but it hits very fast-at the rate of about 500 rounds per minute. Finding the Material Altogether, the Sten was a likely sort of weapon for us in New Zealand, The

problem was to find the metal. We needed the best possible steel for the barrel and the bolt; and even for the pressed metal air jacket, the piece of piping that serves as a stock, the flat sheet metal that’s pressed to make the magazine, trigger guard, trigger, etc.; we needed materials not easily come by in the land of milk and honey. That is where the improvisation came in. We had several thousand old Lee Enfield rifles, no longer fit for service. Some unnamed genius--one among all the anonymous miracle-workers who make the wheels go round in New Zealand’s growing industry -some genius thought of using these old rifles for the value of their barrels. Nine millimetres

is a few points bigger than .303 of an inch. The next step was to find an engineering shop where they could straighten these old barrels and ream them out to the new bore. The engineering shop was found in one city. Five hundred miles away we found another workshop prepared to turn over its battery of presses to the manufacture of other parts. In a month the Sten Gun was in production. Modifications followed as New Zealand engineers began to take short cuts, Every prettiness was cut out of the gun. It became an ugly, 30-inch length of killing efficiency, stripped to the bone. A quick change in organisation, and the second order of Sten’s began coming out of those poky, unknown engineering shops that buttress New Zealand’s principal factories, The total of this second order and the ones that are following cannot be anneunced. Even the Home Guard would be happy if they knew! Early History In Britain, the Sten is the Sten. In Australia, the Sten is the Austen. In New Zealand, the name seems to be one thing we haven’t had time to settle. In some places the gun is known as the Armaf, because of its dual use in Army and Air Force. The gun was originally designed in Britain, and the first model took one month. In December 4, 1940, Lieut-Col, R. V. Shepherd, a British Arms expert, and Mr. Turpin, a draughtsman (his name should be Dick), combined their tatents, and the result was ready by January 4, 1941. The need was stated to them, and they did their job; as _ (Continued on next page)

THE STEN GUN (Continued from previous page)

simple as that. By July, 1942, Britain possessed more than a million Sten guns, and the Home Guard looked forward to using one for every three men. Suitably enough, one of the men responsible for it in New Zealand is called Thunder, though he would not want to be singled out among the many who made the Sten part of an ‘already full day’s work, No one in New Zealand had previously tackled the job of reaming out gun barrels in quantity. It was

done, and done quickly. There was no machine in New Zealand that could wind the square-shaped springs for the Sten’s magazine (it holds 32 rounds). Upstairs in a machine shop hidden away in a back street, a young engineer tackled the problem. The women who worked for him wound the springs by hand. Quickly they discovered that they could make a better spring than the pattern specified. New Zealand went one up on Britain and Australia just because a young man whose name has never been in print had a bright idea. So He Made One That young man was, of course, not content to wind the springs by hand, But there was no machine to do it. None could be imported in time to fill the contract. So he decided to make one, and he was working on it when this was written. I asked to see his plans. "Plans?" he said. "Why, I don’t draw any plans. I make a rough sort of sketch, then I see how it works," There was not enough metal piping to make the air-jacket round the barrel. They’d already cut down the length of the air jacket until the barrel stuck out forlornly into space. Still-not enough steel tubing, Then they found a firm which owned a line of good presses, used until recently to make radio set parts. This was a real New Zealand firm, dedicated in pre-war days to putting a radio set into every house in the country. Part of their policy had included the training of diemakers by American skilled workers, These die-makers took the raw metal and shaped it into dies, The press machinists took the dies and the flat steel and they pressed it into tubes. It looked something like a child’s toy pistol, but they welded the gap together, and they had an air jacket that did its job. They had no time to do more-but why should a means of killing men look pretty? Some Peculiar Virtues And how does it work? Absurd though this sounds, it has some peculier virtues as a weapon. A recruit can pick it up and register on the target right off. Both the Gren and Tommy gun tend in

action to drift. By some happy chance, the Sten avoids this fault. This is a pretty good story already, isn’t it? Well, to cap it, the engineers who. make the Sten gun, find a use for what’s left of the old rifle barrels. The front end is used for the Sten, The rear end, with its breech, is used to make grenade throwers. A cup to hold the grenade is welded on to the old barrel. A simple breech mechanism with trigger and firing-pin is welded against the breech of the old Lee Enfield. A blank cartridge pro-

vides the charge, a few stampings make a stand, and the completed weapon will throw a grenade into a 10-yard circle at 200 yards, I haven’t found out yet what happens to the rest of the old rifle. The bolt will be salvaged for its steel, and possibly someone uses the stock for kindling. I’ll be surprised if any of it’s wasted.

S.

B.